Down the White Rabbit Hole

[pure_crichton]

This had to work. I couldn't face things the way they were. And since I had the know-how to try and change it all, damn it if I wasn't going to at least try. All that mattered was finding a way to make sure Aeryn and the rest of Moya's crew wound up safe and alive, with a capital A. If that meant I bought it in the process instead, well, I'd pony

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[wormhole_surfer]

Okay, so the story kinda goes like this: Pilot, being completely too unreasonable for a guy who might be nice, but looks like the love child of a clam, a goat and a lobster, had decided that even though we'd been through what had to be one of the most bizarre episodes of my already way, way, way off the chart life, me and D'Argo still had to spend eight more days off of Moya. Okay, sure, me and Big D were still bickering like we'd either vowed to kill each other or had been married for twenty or thirty years, and weren't showing any signs of getting any better. But c'mon... we'd just rescued Pip and the Princess from some very unfriendly types who were, y'know... after their, y'know... happy juices.

Yeah. Anyway, D'Argo and I had made with the cavalry rescue (and I swear if anyone mentions those frelling nylons, I'm gonna go so postal), and got the girls back up to the ship safe, sound and left the bad guy laying in a big, lethal puddle of good times. So do we get time off for good behavior? A little extra credit? A half a brownie point?

No.

We got kicked back off Moya, and stranded for eight more days. Luckily, I guess, D and I had gotten to enough of a truce that we could calmly come to the decision that we'd part company, cool off and meet back up just in time to get picked up. Should've been the easiest thing in the whole Uncharted Territories to do, just kill a week on a decent little planet, waiting for our time out to be done, and try not to think too much about the fake Chrichton on Talyn, and what that black-shirted buttmunch might be doing with Aeryn. Yup, shoulda been easy.

But, unfortunately, I'm John friggin' Chrichton, and so it wasn't.

I'll cut it short, finally. Me, alleyway, big blue flashy thing, no way to run. I took the express bus through whatever the hell the thing was, and ended up kissing pavement. Now, half of me was actually glad to see the familiar poured concrete sidewalk, complete with cracks and dirt and...

"Dude. Am I still tripping or are you really here? Harvey?!! This one of your tricks? Show yourself, you no-good son of a... gun!"

Oh, you have got to be kidding me. I pushed myself up onto my feet, staring into the face of the one guy in the whole damn universe that I hated the most. Okay, maybe second to ol' Scorpy. Okay, third to Crais. But the point is, that other John-- the copy, I keep tellin' people-- was just where I wanted to be. Except now, he was here, with me, on what looked way too much like an Earth street to be comfortable.

John-boy poked me in the arm, and I guess if he had any doubts that I was real, that answered that.

"Hey."

"Hey, yourself," I answered, and took a matching step back. The two of us mirrored each other's action, as both of our hands started drifting past our hips to the holster we'd both put our pulse pistols. I wasn't a big fan of the idea of blasting 'myself', but hey, if Wanna-John had a notion of getting rid of me, well, then I wasn't about to let him.

Neither of us got to draw on the other one, though, as a scream tore its way out of the alley behind us. Definitely a terror scream, definitely a woman. I looked at me the other John and we nodded in tandem before charging headlong into the dark shadows.